To reduce our house offer due to Network Rail?

[DoublePole]

As if the whoppingly high house prices wasn’t enough to send me into licking wounds phase ….

We’ve just found how the house we’ve put an offer in for has a strip of land in the front garden and drive owned by Network Rail. NR submitted plans in 2021 to resurface the road our potential new house is on (very quiet country backroad with only a couple of houses) and start using it for line maintenance access.

We don’t know much more than this atm but it’s sent us into a tail spin! We wanted the house because it was a no thru-road and situated in what we thought was rural bliss!

If anyone has been in a similar situation - any advice about the types of questions to be asking? Would you ask for a price reduction? Pull out? Is maintenance a daily thing or annual thing or anything in between? Is the a big concern or are we getting worried over nothing?

Kind words needed - buying a property is super stressful!. 😖

I can’t imagine they would want very frequent use and it sounds like they’ll do extra maintenance but it’s your house and life so its down to you to decide whether its a dealbreaker. I’d go for it unless it was going to be the back route to a busy station. The proximity to a train line would bother be more than the access.

So have I got this right NR own a strip of land which is part of your front garden and part of your driveway? I would want to know more about how this will affect you before proceeding further if I was you. How often will maintenance be carried out? How many of their vehicles will be using it etc. You need all of this in a report from NR.

Could you draw a diagram so that it is clear which part they own?

A lot of Network Rail maintenance is weekends and evenings. Wrong in my opinion but that is the reality. Same over Christmas and Easter.

In your shoes I would withdraw from buying the house.

I would imagine that’s the reason your sellers are selling. And personally I’d pull out. Sorry.

You need to do a diagram of what is being tarmac'd and where you are in relation to works. Go back to your solicitor and get him to contact the vendor's solicitors for more detail. But be prepared to pull out

Access to the line will potentially mean a lot of noise at night - if it’s a rural road with space to park, there will be maintenance vehicles and railway equipment on the road, parked up overnight whilst they work on the line. The actual work might be miles away but the machinery getting onto the railway will be loud.

Same

If Network Rail submitted plans that recently there is a high chance that they will be using the land for just that purpose. You could check what is planned for the railway (upgrading the track, extending station platform, etc). I'd be out of there like a shot. Maybe this is why the property is up for sale in the first place.

Is it just for maintenance or are there plans for a new railway line? If it's the former I wouldn't worry too much. I know ( through work)NR are developing robotic train carriages that scan tracks to identify areas that need repair so manual inspections will be declining. It's been in the works for years and they've already been testing full sized models in Northampton. It's a small robot that goes along the track doing internal scans for cracks and defects. The actual repairs would be once in a blue moon. If it's a new track I'd run like the wind. We bought our house 6 years ago and they now have a 10 year plan to build a line that goes through the highstreet of our village.

God we are near a train line and maintenance is overnight usually and bloody loud
massive machines coming down but it isn’t all the time

how often do they come now?

I'm not a lawyer and don't really know what I'm talking about but look up random strips? I think It might not apply but if it does and you want to buy the land then I THINK british rail are obliged to get the most for the land as possible.

Have lived backing onto a train line. Trains themselves didn’t ever bother us. Maintenance - with bright lights, LOUD LOUD machinery and shouting blokes - bothered me a lot. It might not happen much at all for months/years, then be frequent for months, in the dead of night and at weekends. No fun with small easily disturbed kids and we often didn’t get any notice either.

I’d pull out if I were you and wanted unspoilt rural idyll.

Pull out, you will never have control over what happens on that land. Massive risk IMO.

I have lived with a railway line at the end of my garden for 20 years now. The rail maintenance work is generally through the night and it’s noisy. Lots of workmen arrive in their cars and then the other maintenance vehicles too, plus the big lights they use to work by, all very disruptive. The workers are noisy, calling to each other as they are spaced out, and lots of car horn honking in code in my experience.

On the plus side, it may not be more once or twice a year, so if you think you can put up with it it’s worth considering,

Agree with @Twattergy

Sorry OP, it sounds lovely otherwise

Your rural bliss will be gone.
pull out imho.